Considering mixed results of several studies that analyse the influence of total leverage on stock returns, we focus on a more differentiated ratio in our approach: 'total debt to (total capital + long term debt)' [TD/(TC + LTD)] which treats short- and long-term debt differently. In this...

Emerging market policy makers have been concerned about the financial stability implications of financial globalization. These concerns are focused on behavior under stressed conditions. Do tail events in the home country trigger off extreme responses by foreign investors – are foreign...

This paper examines how Asian financial linkages with systemic economies have changed over time. After developing a factor model, it estimates Asian financial sensitivities to systemic economies, and then seeks to uncover their key determinants, which include trade and financial linkages, as...

This paper considers the role of country-level opacity (the lack of availability of information) in amplifying shocks emanating from financial centers. We provide a simple model where, in the presence of ambiguity (uncertainty about the probability distribution of returns), prices in emerging...

What attracts conventional investors to Islamic financial instruments? We answer this question by comparing Malaysian Islamic and conventional security prices and their response to macrofinancial factors. Our analysis suggests that Islamic and conventional bond and equity prices are driven by...

This paper examines the benefits from hedging the currency exposure of international investments in single- and multi-country equity and bond portfolios from the perspectives of German, Japanese, British and American investors. Over the period 1975 to 2009, hedging of currency risk substantially...

This paper investigates whether financial crises are alike by considering whether a single modeling framework can fit multiple distinct crises in which contagion effects link markets across national borders and asset classes. The crises considered are Russia and LTCM in the second half of 1998,...

This paper examines the comovement in emerging market bond returns and disentangles the influence of external and domestic factors. The conceptual framework, set in the context of asset allocation, allows us to describe the channels through which shocks originating in a particular emerging or...

The paper analyses the earnings management practices of Malaysian firms over the post-crisis period. We propose three dimensions of earnings management, namely earnings aggressiveness, loss avoidance and earnings smoothing, to empirically test a sample of public-listed firms on Bursa Malaysia....

This paper examines the empirical validity of the conditional capital asset pricing model (CAPM) with three betas. Specifically, having modelled the market volatility return like a GARCH (1,1) process and having defined three regimes of volatility (low, neutral and high), we find that most of...